HOLIDAY TREATS NEED NOT STRETCH WAISTLINE.(Living)

Byline: Teresa S. Johnson Cox News Service

How can it be that in the short time between Thanksgiving and New Year's - that's just over a month - the calories can mount so quickly? How can you put on pounds so fast when taking them off last year went so slowly?

It's really pretty easy to figure out why the holiday push often means a post-holiday paunch, according to Jo Ann Carson, director of the clinical nutrition program at Southwestern Allied Health Sciences School at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Galveston, Tex.

Eating an extra 500 calories a day every day in the 35 days this year between Thanksgiving and New Year's …